Dead Water Zone - Softcover

Oppel, Ken

Softcover

ISBN 10: 155074092X ISBN 13: 9781550740929

Publisher: Kids Can Press, 1992

Synopsis

A novel for young adults

About this title

About the Author:

Kenneth Oppel is the author of Skybreaker and Airborn (winner of the Governor General’s Award), as well as the Silverwing Saga (Silverwing, Sunwing and Firewing), which has sold over one million copies worldwide and has won numerous prizes, including the Mr. Christie’s Book Award and the CLA Book of the Year for Children Award, as well as many children’s choice awards across the country. His other titles include Peg and the Whale, Dead Water Zone and The Live-Forever Machine. Voted children’s author of the year by Canadian booksellers in 2006, he lives in Toronto with his wife and three children. Visit his website at www.kennethoppel.com.

From Kirkus Reviews:

A well-realized world of rotting docks and ramshackle buildings on the shore of a polluted lake forms the setting for this haunting character study. Summoned by his brilliant but frail brother Sam, Paul leaves his comfortable suburban neighborhood for unsavory Watertown--and finds that both he and his brother are being hunted by the quasi-legal Cityweb: Sam has discovered a mutated microorganism in the lake that, though eventually toxic, greatly enhances physical ability. But despite plenty of danger, narrow scrapes, and a lurid, violent climax, outward events seem almost incidental compared to Paul's inner struggles. Once complacent in his role as protective older brother, he's angry to see Sam growing up and away from him and racked by guilt to feel so; his turmoil increases when he meets a new Sam--preternaturally fast and strong, exultantly freed from his former metabolic disorder. Oppel explores the brothers' dependent love-hate relationship with some sensitivity, though the confessional tone gets heavy at times. Glamorous but deadly, the microorganism is like a drug, so the story can be read on that level, too; indeed, Oppel adds a subplot involving a streetwise young Watertowner searching for her lake water-addicted mother. A thoughtful story with an unusual combination of ingredients. (Fiction. 12+) -- Copyright ©1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

About this edition

• Publisher: Kids Can Press
• Publication date: 1992
• ISBN 10: 155074092X
• ISBN 13: 9781550740929
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 170